Fire Is Alone
by ZebraFeet
Summary: This is a Sword Art Online fan fiction about Chika. A girl who finds out she may or may not ever be able to see her family again, shortly after she logs onto the Death Game, Sword Art Online. This is going through the SAO storyline, but from the point of view from another devastated gamer.


Chika ran down the sidewalk at full speed. The wind hit her abruptly in the face and it turned her cheeks and nose bright red, but she did not care. She had been waiting for this video game for over a year. Her long, brown hair was flying behind her, and from just looking at her expression, you could tell she was overcome with excitement. She and her friend Atsuko were racing to get online first.

_Just around the corner, _she thought, _and I will beat her._ She flew around the corner, and the wind caused her to fall flat on her face. It took her a couple of seconds for her mind to register what had just happened, but she was not badly hurt. She slowly picked herself up off of the ground and limped the rest of the way. When she got inside the door to her parents' apartment in Tokyo, she did her best to get to her room quickly, so that Atsuko could not beat her.

_She probably already has, _Chika thought as she lay the coat over the bottom of her bed. Little did she know, she would not be able to pick it back up for nearly two years. She quickly inserted the game into her computer and then plugged in the NerveGear. As she lay down on her bed, she thought about all of the things she had to look forward to. _All five senses? Just think of the possibilities! I wonder how the food will taste! When should I get off? _She glanced at her watch. It was about noon. _I'll get off in an hour or so._

She slowly lowered the NerveGear onto her head. She took a deep breath and pushed the ON button.

"Link, Start!" She said into the helmet, and off she went.

In bright letters across the middle of the screen, it read "Welcome to Sword Art Online!". She was trembling with excitement. She chose the language Japanese, and typed in her username. Fire. Atsuko was going to choose Ice as her username, so that the two could team up and fight together throughout the game. It was now time for Fire to choose her avatar. She chose a girl with ginger hair and freckles. Fire was always unhappy with her appearance when she was younger, and she always fantasized about looking like that. Finally, since she was in a world of her own, she could now find out what it felt like to look unique. She altered her eyes to be purple, and then moved on to pick out her outfit.

She picked out an orange shirt and skirt, with a black cloak to go over it. She wore white lace up boots that came up to her knees. She chose for her hair to be braided, and pushed the "CONFIRM" button.

Fire spawned in the middle of a courtyard that she figured was the first floor. Once she got used to the sun shining, she looked up to see a gigantic banner hanging on a tall stone wall that said, "Welcome to the Town of Beginnings!"

She took another deep breath and brought up the SAO interface. She touched the character search link and typed "Ice" into the search bar. A picture came up of a girl with bright blue pigtails and outrageous makeup. _Yep, that's her, _she thought. She touched the link and was instantly transported to the location of Ice. She looked around, to find a girl just like the one from the picture with a black outfit on and wearing creepers the same color as her hair.

"Atsuko!" She yelled. The girl with the blue hair turned around.

"Oh my gosh, Fire?" I love your outfit! By the way, we only address people by their usernames in the game. There are some people I know in real life, that I would _not _want to know in the game. You know what I mean?"

"Uh, yeah. I guess."

"Fire? I totally saw it when you fell flat on your face!" She started laughing. "That was hilarious!"

"Shut up." She said, only half joking, "At least you were running slow enough to still be able to see me fall."

Ice jokingly punched Fire in the shoulder.

"Hey Ice, want to grab a bite to eat? I'm anxious to find out how the food tastes here."

"Sure! There's this place I saw around the corne-"

"Beat you there!" Fire cut her off and took off running.

"Oh, no you don't!" Ice began to chase after her, only to find a bright blue light surrounding her. This was happening to Fire as well.

"Ice? Where are Yo-" The light disappeared, and both girls found themselves in the middle of the courtyard that they began in. Fire saw Ice and ran to meet her. "Ice, are you alright?" Ice would not look at her, she just pointed at the sky. Fire looked up to see a red warning sign floating in the air. A second or two later, red warning signs consumed the sky, and a deep red liquid began to ooze from the cracks in between them. The liquid then began to form a body, and Fire started to wonder if it was, in fact, a feature of the game.

"Many of you may have already noticed that the logout button is missing," the figure in red spoke. _What!? _Fire thought. She pulled up the interface, and where the logout button was before, there was nothing.

"This is not a malfunction, it is a feature of the game." He said.

_No. This is a joke, right? _Thought fire.

From then on, only a few of Kayaba's words were heard by Fire. She was in too much shock to listen to anything.

"...Die in the game, and you die in real life..." and "...I made this world so that I could control it..." and "... I gave you a gift, it is in your inventory."

Fire pulled up the interface once again, and looked through her inventory. She tapped on the link and a mirror fell into her hand. _A mirror? _She thought. And then the light appeared again. But this time, instead of being teleported, she found that her unique avatar was no longer in existence.. She did not have her favorite color of hair, or any freckles, she was not Fire, she was Chika. This fantasy turned out to be about as limited as real life, from Fire's perspective. This was no fair. He had no right to do this. She decided right then and there, in the middle of that courtyard, that Kayaba was going to pay. That she was going to survive that death game, no matter what the cost.

_At least I still have Ice, _Chika thought, but when she looked to her right, she saw the short blonde girl that was Atsuko burst into a million different tiny shards of blue. Atsuko was gone. The girl Fire had known since she was three had gone. Forever.

No. _No._

"If the NerveGear gets taken off of your head, you will die. Although the chances now are much lower, since it has already happened to over 200 people," said Kayaba.

Fire looked around her to see hundreds of people in shock, each of their live live ruined that day, simply by the press of a button. To her left, she saw a girl around 16 or 17, looking at the figure in red with wide eyes. She had chestnut hair, with the fronts braided around to the back of her head with the rest of her hair. Once Kayaba Akihiko was done speaking, Fire looked once again at the wide-eyed faces around her, and with an angry glint in her eyes, she limped toward the weapon store.


End file.
